International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET)

Volume 2 Issue 10 pp 683-686 January 2014 www.ijsret.org ISSN 2278 0882

IJSRET @ 2014
Crosscutting Concern Identification Using Graph Theory
Richa Singh
Banaras Hindu University
Tapan Kant*
Banaras Hindu University
Manjari Gupta
Banaras Hindu University
Abstract
The process of determining crosscutting candidates
through aspect mining and refactoring those candidates
in existing software system is, for a good AOP [1].In this
paper we proposed a graph based technique for
identifying the crosscutting candidates. We are providing
in initial assessment from the existing [2] how a vector
space model and identification of crosscutting concerns
steps proposed our algorithm based on crosscutting
concerns graph algorithm. This algorithm is used to
identify the concerns in the system on the basis of
distance between methods in the graph.
Index TermsAspect Mining, Aspect Oriented
Programming, Crosscutting Concern, Vector-Space-
Model, Object-Oriented-Programming.
[1] INTRODUCTION
Aspect oriented programming is a new prototype that is
initiated to design and execute crosscutting concerns [1].
AOP mainly tackle the modularity limitations of Object
oriented programming (OOP). It attempts to effectively
sum up the crosscutting concerns to form a new type of
module known as an aspect [19]. An Aspect is a modular
unit of crosscutting implementation. It is defined very
much like a class, and can have methods, fields,
constructors, initializers, named pointcuts, and advices
[1]. At compile time, the aspect is weaved to generate
the final system, using a special tool called weaver.
Crosscutting concerns are characteristics of software
system whose implementations are spread over the
source code. Crosscutting concerns in non AO have two
symptoms. Code Scattering: the code for one concern is
spread across the system. Code tangling: in order to
implement one concern the programmer needs to address
or crosscut another concerns as well.
Aspect mining is a process that tries to identify
crosscutting concerns in existing software systems. The
goal is to refactor the existing systems to use aspect
oriented programming to make them easier to maintain
and to evolve [3].
[1.1] Aspect Mining
Aspect mining is a relatively new research direction that
tries to identify crosscutting concerns in already
developed software systems without using AOP [3]. The
goal is to identify them and then to refactor them to
aspects, to achieve a system that can be easily
understood, maintained and modified. Aspect Mining is
a reverse software engineering exploration technique that
is concerned with the development of concepts,
principles, methods and tools supporting the
identification and extraction of re-factorable aspect
candidates in legacy software systems [4].
To achieve this level of modularization in legacy and
traditional object-oriented applications, candidates for
refactoring first need to be identified. This step is known
as aspect mining [5]. In other words, aspect mining
refers to the discovery of potential crosscutting concerns
that can be modularized into aspects.
Through Aspect mining technique we can identify
crosscutting concerns during software development
lifecycle or in already developed software system. The
goal of these techniques is to provide an overview of the
source-code entities that play a role in a particular
crosscutting concern. This not only improves the
understandability of the concern in particular and of the
software in general, but also provides a first step in the
migration towards applying aspect-oriented software
development techniques [5].
International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET)
Volume 2 Issue 10 pp 683-686 January 2014 www.ijsret.org ISSN 2278 0882
IJSRET @ 2014
Our approach uses clustering based aspect mining
techniques. There are just a few aspect mining
techniques which uses clustering to identify crosscutting
concerns [2, 3, 4, 11, 13, 15].
In our approach, a connected weighted graph is
constructed for a given source code, where vertices are
corresponding to methods and we assume among all
methods weights of edges are corresponding to the
Euclidian distance between two methods. By applying
given approach described in this paper different
subcomponents of this connected graph are identifies.
These different subcomponents are corresponding to
different crosscutting concerns in the source code. For
this we will consider a vector space model, identification
of crosscutting concerns steps and threshold value
described in [2].
The paper is structured as follows, section 2 describes
related work .Section 3 and section 4 describes a vector
space model and identification of crosscutting concerns
steps [2] which are used in our approach. Section 5,
describes our approach for identification of crosscutting
concerns and section 6 describes the system graph
algorithm. In the last section 7 we conclude and present
future work.
[2] RELATED WORK
Several approaches have been proposed for aspect
mining till now. The first approaches in aspect mining
were the query based search techniques. The developer
had to search so called and associated tool showed all
the places where the seed was found [6].There are many
tools have been developed for this as Aspect mining tool
[7], Aspect browser [8], AMTEX [9],Feature
Exploration and analysis tool(FEAT)[10].
Later on researchers have focused on developing such
aspect mining techniques that do not require initial seed
from the user [6]. Some of them uses fan in analysis
techniques [3], [11], some of them uses Formal concept
analysis [5], some of them use clustering ([3], [12], [13])
some of them uses clone detection techniques [14].
Those techniques try to identify the crosscutting
concerns with some kind of system representation and
are called automated aspect mining techniques [6]. These
are all static approaches that analyze the source code for
crosscutting concerns. In [5] a dynamic approach was
purposed to analyze the execution of source code to
identify crosscutting concerns.
In [18], proposed a clustering approach in aspect mining
based on k-means and hierarchical agglomerative
clustering techniques and in [17] some quality measures
for evaluating the results of clustering based aspect
mining techniques.
[3] VECTOR SPACE MODEL
Several approaches have been used vector space model
[2] for their own purpose. We are also used the vector
space model described in the below: In our approach the
vertices to be considered are the methods from the
software system M = {m
1
,m
2
, ...m
n
}. The methods
belong to the application classes or are called from the
application classes. Based on the vector space model,[2]
considered each method as an l-dimensional vector as M
= {m
1
,m
2
, ...m
n
} two vector-space models have
considered that illustrate code scattering symptoms in
software system [2]:
1-The vector associated with the method m is {FIV,
CC}, where FIV is the fan-in value [11] of m (the
number of methods that call m) and CC is the number of
calling classes.
This model has been denoted by M
1
.
2- The vector associated with the method m is {FIV, B
1
,
B
2
, ... B
l-1
}, where FIV is the fan-in value of m and B
i
(1
i l1) is 1, if the method m is called from a method
belonging to the application class C
i
, and 0, otherwise.
We denote this model by M
2
.
In our approach we will consider Euclidian distance as a
weight of the edges between two vertices (methods) in
the connected graph. In this context the Euclidian
distance between two methods m
i
and m
j
defined as:-
d
E
(m
i
,m
j
) =
2
In our approach we have chosen the value 1 for the
threshold. The reason for this choice is the following [2]:
if the distance between two methods m
i
and m
j
is less or
equal to 1, considered that they are similar enough to be
placed in the same (crosscutting) concern. It mentioned
that, from the aspect mining point of view, using
Euclidian distance as metric and the vector space model
proposed above, the value 1 for threshold makes the
difference between a crosscutting concern and a non-
crosscutting one.
[4] IDENTIFICATION OF CROSSCUTTING
CONCERNS STEPS
The following steps [2, 3, 15 & 16] are defined for
identification of crosscutting concerns.
International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET)
Volume 2 Issue 10 pp 683-686 January 2014 www.ijsret.org ISSN 2278 0882
IJSRET @ 2014
Step 1: Computation of set of methods in the chosen
source code as well as computation of the features set
values, for each method in the set.
Step 2: Filtering techniques owned by certain data
structures categories like Array List, vectors are
removed. Also, the techniques owned by some built-in
categories like String, String Builder and String Buffer
are removed.
Step 3: By using System graph algorithms described in
section5, the remaining set of methods is arranged into
clusters. The clusters are separated by the average
distance from the point 0m in descending order, where
0m is referred to m dimensional vector with individual
part 0.
Step 4: The clusters acquired are evaluated to detect
which methods belong to crosscutting concerns. The
cluster that contain procedures owned by crosscutting
concerns [11].
The Algorithm that would be used in step 3 we are
purposed in the next section.
[5] OUR APPROACH
Let X ={m
1
,m
2
,.m
n
} be a software system, where
1in is a method of the system. We consider a
crosscutting concerns as a set C={c
1
,c
2
,.c
cn
} with
Cm, of methods that implement this concerns. The
number of methods in crosscutting concerns c is
C
n
=C. Let CCC = {C
1
, C
2
, C
q
} be the set of all
crosscutting concerns that exist within X. The number of
crosscutting concerns in the system X is therefore
represented by q=|CCC|.
In this section we describe the concept of system
Crosscutting Concern using Graph and the following
definitions are needed to describe our approach.
Definition1:-Let X= {m
1
,m
2
,m
n
}, be software
methods and d
E
the Euclidian distance metric between
edges (methods). We can define System graph S
G
as:
S
G
=(V,E) ; Where the set of vertices V={m
1
,m
2
,.m
n
}
of the software system X. And the set of edges
E={(m
i
,m
j
) m
i
,m
j
V, m
i
m
j
} & all the edges are
labeled with the Euclidian distance as:
W (m
i
,m
j
)=d
E
(m
i,
m
j
)=
2
Definition2:-Let X={m
1
,m
2
,m
n
} be a software system
and d
E
(Euclidian distance) the metric between methods
in a multidimensional and S
G
the corresponding system
graph (Definition 1) We define the problem of finding
those components whose edges Euclidian distance is less
than one i.e. d
E
(m
i
,m
j
)<1, in the software system X.
Algorithm for finding those components of crosscutting
concerns from system graph SG is described in the next
section.
[6] SYSTEM GRAPH ALGORITHM
In this part we describe S
G
algorithm for determining the
d
E
(m
i
,m
j
)<1,of software system X. This algorithm will
be used in grouping step in the section 4 [2] for
identification of crosscutting concerns. These are the
following steps in S
G
algorithm:-
1-Create the concerns graph as shown in definition1.
2-Determine the edges whose distance between vertices
(methods) is less than 1. These edges are concerns in the
software system X.
[7] CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS
We have presented in this paper a new graph based
approach in aspect mining. For this we have used system
concerns algorithm, in the grouping step of identification
of crosscutting concerns. We will find the connected
graph whose Euclidian distance between vertices
(methods) is less than one and obtained vertices are
analyzed in order to identify crosscutting concerns from
the system.
Future work can be done in the following points:
We can apply this approach in case studies, like
JHOT Draw, Pet store and JEdit etc.
We can compare the results with other algorithm
of aspect mining techniques.
We can improve vector space model to obtained
better result using this algorithm.
We can take another threshold value to improve
the result.
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International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET)
Volume 2 Issue 10 pp 683-686 January 2014 www.ijsret.org ISSN 2278 0882
IJSRET @ 2014
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